Teachers can encourage youngsters to express their ideas creatively by providing help in three areas--content, language, and process. In terms of content, children often have few resources for tapping their thoughts, and may need 'pump primers' such as being told the beginning and end of a story and speculating about a variety of middles. Once children are helped with ideas or are able to draw upon their own store of experiences, they usually require help with language to add interest to their work and make ideas more vivid and expressive. Such activities as taking rather barren sentences and fleshing them out, or taking interesting sentences and making them dull and ordinary can be helpful. Process aid is important throughout and may consist, in the beginning stages, of working on ideas as a total class with the teacher taking over the mechanics of writing while the class talks out plot variations. The teacher will want to be encouraging of ideas, rather than judgmental, and the kind of talk he uses will be important in giving worth to children's efforts. (Author)